The Village Stay: A Gulp of Perspective Before the Plunge

In the interests of the success of the pilot project—my pilot project—I must come to know Dhala. If one of the first truths of development is that one size does not fit all, a related, and similarly hoary and hallowed bit of wisdom is the injunction to know the (local) context in which one is working—this is one way of avoiding the temptation to fit one size to all. Thus, my visit to Dhala had, at its heart, the goal of acquaintance with the community. It was, and continues to be necessary to both develop an understanding of the village context as it directly relates to the form and composition of the project (i.e. location, nature, safety, and reliability of water sources; sanitation and water handling, treatment, and storage practices; attitudes toward user fees for access to safe water), as well as, on an interpersonal level, to become familiar with the people of the community as individuals within the target group with whom and for whom I will be working (and on whom much of the success of the pilot will ultimately hinge!). And thus, my focus for the time being is needle’s eye narrow: Dhala village, population 1,800 (?), of Bishiwara Zone, Jhadol Block, Udaipur District, Rajasthan State, India, Asia, the World, the Solar System, the Milky Way, the Known Universe.

My first night in Dhala, as I reclined on my bed on the porch of the village balwadi (nursery school--the pink building in the foreground of the photo above) and watched the hills draw darkness close, my mind returned to a question that has often crept into my private moments in India: How is it that I’ve arrived at this waypoint in life? The question is heavy, freighted with ramifications, off-shoots, and follow-ons; it is a full interrogation of a life, its passions and decisions—and not suitably addressed here. But how does a sports-mad kid from rural Indiana come to find himself in a remote village in rural India? Of all possible career paths, how does he land in international development? And of all the myriad landing points in a discipline as broad as development, how and why a single clean water pilot project? It is this last question, or one particular aspect of it, that seizes my attention for the moment.

Three summers ago, while part of a team evaluating a small dams project in Kitui District, Kenya, I kept a journal of sorts, at the suggestion of my internship supervisor, in order to facilitate the composition of a final report of my experience—the report was required to receive credit toward my Master’s degree (I finished neither). On June 27, 2005, I had my first meeting with the rest of the team: Henry Rempel, team leader and professor emeritus of Economics at the University of Manitoba; Charity Nyaga, a Kenyan gender and community development specialist; and Hilda Manzi, a Kitui native, recent college graduate, and agricultural specialist. That evening I wrote:

Already, after one short day of meetings, I am impressed by Charity and Hilda’s insight and knowledge, especially Hilda, who must be younger than me, but must know more of the political economy of Kenya, and of Kitui district particularly, than I know of, well, anything. She said: “My one goal in life is to one day help the people from where I come. That is what I want to do.” Let there be 10 million, 50 million Hildas in Africa, and all over the developing world! She is educated and erudite (rare enough coming from “underdeveloped” Kitui), but she also wishes to work for the wellbeing of her own people. No brain drain. Not only must more be educated, but they must want to remain in their own countries and not be lured by the riches and temptations of the West. That is how poverty and misery and sickness will be defeated. Not by the World Bank and its 3,000 development economists. Right here with the little girl growing up in Kitui District. Maybe I should take that to heart. What place do I have in development work? I don’t think I could ever be a Hilda or a Charity, or know what they know, intuit what they intuit. It would take years, and few of us mzungu will commit our lives to one foreign piece of land, one foreign population of people, one foreign culture. As selfish as it may sound, I know I won’t. I want to help everyone, to lift all 2.4 billion out of poverty this instant! I don’t have the patience or fortitude to commit my life to lifting 500 or 1,000 out. And that’s how it will happen: 500 or 1,000 at a time, over many years, with excruciating diligence. Hilda can do that, and I don’t think I can….Maybe I should direct my energies toward easing the way for more Hildas, rather than pretending that I can do and know what she does and knows.

But on some level, I am now attempting to achieve precisely that intimacy of knowledge and precision of focus that I said I wouldn’t, or couldn’t, or shouldn’t. In just one or two months, I hope to have learned a single strand in the shaggy mane of existence of a single small village in India, that I might then be able to, if not lift that village out of poverty, at the least improve its health, and thereby its quality of life, to some tangible, appreciable degree. Given the foregoing passage, it may be that you expect me to puzzle at the presumption inherent in such an undertaking; in fact, I feel the expectation is perfectly reasonable, if even a bit conservative in its timeframe (but perhaps my superiors are factoring in their own plodding, and after all, as has been made maddeningly clear time and again, I am almost wholly dependent on them for my progress).

It is the narrowness, the 1,800, that invites pause. Although success of the pilot will spur expansion, it is still a drastically attenuated focus for one who once claimed, only in half-jest, the desire to end poverty in the world—a desire that, quixotic as it may be, must demand a macro rather than micro perspective. In other words, a commitment to global poverty eradication first demands a focus—to return to an earlier formulation—on the policy and management side of development, specifically that residing at the very tip of the international development superstructure, a height from which the vast majority of funds descend (leaving aside developing country governments for now)—the major bilateral and multilateral donors. This in opposition to a focus on the implementation side of development, where the nitty gritty details of improving the lives of individuals—ten, fifty, 500, 1,000, 1,800 at a time—are toiled and fretted over.

Yet for the time being, I am content to prostrate myself in the nitty gritty, at the globe-spanning base of that superstructure. I am content to learn Dhala, and only Dhala—its local context, its geography, and its inhabitants. There was, after all, good reason to be lying in a bed on a nursery school porch, half a world from home, pondering the logistical challenges inherent in visiting every water source in a sprawling and formless settlement splayed over the austere charm of India’s Aravalli Hills. The thought perhaps wasn’t comfort enough to sustain goodwill throughout my time in Dhala, but it was necessary comfort—and yet it seemed likely I would also need a good host, guide, and mediator if my stay were to be both productive and pleasant.